Samsung Galaxy S9 specs and price

The Samsung Galaxy S9 offers up a beautiful design, top specs and one of the most interesting camera setups around, and on paper at least, the S9 is a major contender to be 2018’s phone of the year. The smartphone comes with an improved camera but with about the same features as last years Samsung Galaxy S8 with subtle differences.

Design and Display

The Samsung Galaxy S9 looks very much like its predecessor maintaining the nice premium build as seen before. It is also made up of a combination of metal and glass to give a smartphone that is both classy and stylish though it is a fingerprint magnet. Samsung seems to have heard the criticism levelled at last years S8’s placement of the fingerprint sensor. But placing it just below the camera still does not make much sense and it is still awkward. Samsung has taken the effort to mask all the cameras and sensors sitting in the bezel of the phone, making it look like the screen blends in with the edges, which creates a more immersive viewing experience.

On the bottom edge of the phone is a USB-Type C charging port, with a bottom-firing speaker and a headphone jack.

The screen and display of the Galaxy S9 is still as stunning as last years S8.

The 5.8-inch screen size and 18.5:9 aspect ratio is the same as the S8, but there are some improvements in the AMOLED panel. Colours are incredibly vibrant, but still accurate, and the screen gets brilliantly bright. The S9 has a Quad HD+ (2,960 x 1,440 pixel) resolution. Samsung Galaxy S9 offers Corning Gorilla Glass 5 for protection against scratches and easy damage.

Battery and Camera

As much as we would have loved to see a larger battery capacity the Samsung Galaxy S9 only comes with a 3, 000mAh battery. This is sort of problem with its predecessor but the setup conserves power and the quick charge is still present using the USB Type-C connector. If you are a power user, dont expect to use the Galaxy S9 all day without charging it.

You won’t get any dual camera system on the Galaxy S9, but you do get a killer single 12-megapixel camera with variable aperture.

That doesn’t sound as cool, but you’ll undoubtedly be more than satisfied and impressed with the photos — specifically the low-light photos — the S9 captures. It has a DRAM chip above it which delivers power directly to the camera, hence, a much quicker processing speed. Another great thing, is the dual aperture technology which switches between a f/1.5 and f/2.4.

What’s even more impressive is Samsung’s multi-frame noise-reduction image processing, which may not sound interesting, but is important. We’ve all taken photos at night only to find a lot of grain or “noise” ruining the picture. When you tap the shutter icon on the Galaxy S9, the phone captures 12 photos it then compiles to eliminate as much noise as possible.

Hardware and Software

Under the hood, the Samsung Galaxy S9 offers two different options based on your region of course. While let’s say in the USA, there are some carriers that might not work with a certain chipset. To avoid this, the Samsung is rolling out with two different SoCs. For users in USA and China you have an Octa-core Qualcomm MSM8998 Snapdragon 845 processor with an Adreno 630 GPU. For the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East and Africa) there’s an Octa-core Exynos 9810 chipset with a Mali-G72 MP18 GPU.

The Samsung Galaxy S9 features a 4GB RAM which is enough for a smooth performance . You also have a 64GB internal storage space with variants of 128GB and 256GB respectively. The smartphone supports a memory card up to 200GB for more storage space. Samsung Galaxy S9 runs on Android 8.0 Oreo with the Samsung Experience UI formerly referred to as TouchWiz.

Pricing and Availability

The Samsung Galaxy S9 announced at the Mobile World Congress 2018. It started its global launch on March 16 starting at a price of around £739 which is about 373, 000 Naira. This is much cheaper than the iPhone X, Apple’s flagship. Samsung Galaxy S9 has launched in Nigeria,as you can now buy it at leading online stores like Jumia in these countries.